High Treason and Low Comedy. Robert T. O’Keeffe

It’s you I have to thank, gracious lady.

      FRANZI: Good-bye.

      REDL: Good-, Good- ...Live well!

      (Franzi exits)

      A Homosexual? Horrible!

      REDL (he goes to his desk and takes out writing paper): Whom should I write to first? The Corps Commander. (He starts to write, tears it up, then starts again. There’s a knock on the door.) Already? Come in!

      (Umanitzky, General Höfer, and Major-Auditor Worlitschek enter, wearing their military caps.)

      REDL: I know why you’ve come. I won’t waste time denying anything.

      UMANITZKY: I have to ask you if you have any accomplices, Mister Redl?

      REDL (he startles when he hears the words “Mister Redl”): No, no one.

      UMANITZKY: Who recruited you as a spy?

      REDL: The Russian military attaché, he had me under surveillance when I was acting as an expert witness at an espionage trial, and he found out then that I ... (he pauses) ... that I’m a homosexual.

      I’m a victim of blackmail.

      UMANITZKY: A Homosexual?

      HÖFER: Horrible!

      WORLITSCHEK: Achh ... the devil take you!

      UMANITZKY: Mister Redl, under the highest orders you have to bring this affair to its end within the hour in the only way possible. Have I made myself clear?

      You are allowed to ask for a pistol

      REDL (after a moment): Yes.

      UMANITZKY: You are allowed to ask for a pistol.

      REDL: Please ― I respectfully ― request ― a pistol.

      (Umanitzky gives the Major-Auditor a signal, whereupon he hands over a revolver: Umanitzky then confirms to General Höfer that he has given it to Redl.)

      UMANITZKY (he salutes): Herr General, I respectfully report the completion of our official mission.

      (Höfer salutes back to Umanitzky. The three men leave the room. Redl takes the revolver, lifts it toward his open mouth, and the curtain falls, after which a shot is heard.)

      THE END

Chapter 4. Kisch and the Redl Case: Reportage into Melodrama

      Viewers and readers of Die Hetzjagd were exposed to a constricted presentation of the complicated Redl affair, the culmination of a series of events that occurred over a decade before reaching its unsavory end in 1913. Therefore in the present chapter I supply information on the historical events on which the play was based. Even within the confined temporal frame of one day on which the strands of several narratives concluded in Redl’s death, there was more to the story than Kisch could show on stage. My historical exposition is followed by analytical remarks about the structure and themes of the play, and then returns again to historical issues: first, the accuracy of Kisch’s reporting on the case; and, second, how historians assess the significance of Redl’s espionage. A more detailed look at other aspects of the play—its performance history, contemporaneous critical responses, and its placement in a series of plays written by Kisch during the 1920s—is undertaken in Chapter 7.

      During the 1920s the names of Kisch and Redl became intertwined to the extent that readers and critics considered it ‘his’ story in an almost proprietary way. This was due to the success of Kisch’s 1924 book about the case, Der Fall des Generalstabschefs Redl. In the chapter of his memoirs re-telling the Redl story Kisch reminisced about his lead role in breaking the case during the two weeks in May and June of 1913 when he had written numerous unsigned articles about the affair for Bohemia.1 The General Staff immediately issued a ‘cover story’ that Redl’s suicide resulted from overwork, insomnia, and anxiety; in the terminology of the era, he had a “nervous breakdown”. To keep up the pretense, in recognition of his years of diligent service he was to be given a full-ceremonial military burial later in the week. This deliberately misleading version of what had happened came out in Vienna’s Neue Freie Presse on Monday, May 26, a day after Redl had taken his own life.2 By the next day this version was undermined by Kisch, who had an ‘inside source’ who gave him enough information to indicate the falsity of the official Viennese press release. As he explains in Sensation Fair, he and his editor averted foreseeable censorship by using the ruse of printing a brief notice that the authorities in Vienna denied the truth of rumors of espionage as the real reason for Redl’s suicide.3 Kisch noted that this would lead the average reader, skeptical about government press releases, to the conclusion that an official denial meant that what was being denied might well be true. The local censors in Prague did not check with Vienna, so the notice was not blocked and the first challenges to the army’s version of what had happened soon followed.

      Kisch’s claims about his priority and singular importance in reporting the story in 1913 were exaggerated, as shown by excerpts of articles published in other newspapers that are noted by Patka4 and quoted in John Sadler and Sylvie Fisch’s 2016 re-examination of the Redl case.5 Between May 26th and June 6th, 1913, Bohemia published 17 unsigned articles about the Redl case that have been attributed to Kisch.6 They vary greatly in length. Their sourcing is often anonymous, though Kisch also wrote longer pieces that paraphrased reports in other newspapers (mostly Viennese). They were speculative at times, repeating various rumors about aspects of the case that made for an exciting story. The speculation took place in a context of meager and deliberately misleading or outright false information released by official sources (whom Kisch also quoted).

      Kisch’s 1913 pieces about the case were an integral part of a swelling ‘call and response’ effect in the local newspapers, with each day’s succession of competing speculations about the case driving further criticism of the General Staff by parliamentarians, factional politicians, and the designated Successor, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. By May 29th the General Staff had to reverse itself, cancelling Redl’s military funeral and admitting through a terse published notice that Redl had committed suicide in order to avoid prosecution for espionage on behalf of a “foreign power” and for engaging in homosexual activity, an offense under both civil and military law.7 As stated, the two clauses of the indictment implied that Redl had been blackmailed into espionage by foreign agents aware of his homosexuality. The link between Redl’s homosexuality and his spying had not, in fact, been established through forensic investigation in 1913 and is still an open question (that is, Redl might have been blackmailed into espionage, or he might have volunteered his services in order to fund his increasingly lavish manner of living―the point is still moot and, historically, inconsequential).

      By the time he wrote his last article on the Redl case for Bohemia, Kisch had established the following (with the assistance of reports from other papers), more or less correctly: Redl’s espionage on behalf of Russia; his homosexuality, including an affair with his protégé, the cavalry lieutenant, Stefan Horinka; the fact that, in spite of an official counter-version, Redl had not been under suspicion before May 24th; police (Secret Service) involvement in the case as well as active investigation by members of military intelligence; the existence of the letters carrying cash, which had been under watch at the Central Post Office for about seven weeks; the police surveillance trap; the detectives’ pursuit of an unknown suspect and their discovery of a pen-knife sheath in a taxicab used by Redl; the detectives’ recovery of incriminating scraps of paper disposed of by Redl while under surveillance; the successful ruse that ensnared Redl at the Hotel Klomser; Redl’s dinner with his old friend, the jurist Viktor Pollak; the commission of officers that visited Redl on the night of the 24th; his suicide by pistol; and, based on the first (false) news releases, the General Staff’s attempt to cover up the real reasons behind Redl’s suicide. Kisch had also passed along incorrect speculations and, like other reporters, remained ignorant of various details of the case. He learned some of these through research and interviews in the early 1920s. His 1913 coverage of the case was aggressive journalism, skeptical of the authorities, but in no sense reportage. But his 1924 book on the case, discussed